The Unemployment Conspiracy

Bruce Lesnick

Real unemployment in the U.S. today hovers around 8.3%, afflicting more than 17 million people. This is roughly equivalent to the combined populations of New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago and Houston. Over one third of the working age population has given up looking for work.

On top of this, pundits project that many more jobs will be lost to automation in the near future, with computers and robots replacing as many as 49% of the jobs now done by humans. The mechanization of dirty, dangerous, repetitive, mind-numbing tasks should be a blessing. Instead, the future is described in apocalyptic terms. Why?

The problem is rooted in the disingenuous narrative we are fed. Jobs, so the story goes, are mysterious, ephemeral things, whose comings and goings are largely beyond our control. The number of available jobs has to vary independently from the work that needs to be done and the number of people available to do it, or so we are told.

There is plenty of work that needs to be done –converting our energy industry to renewables, repairing and enhancing infrastructure, building housing for all who need it, improving student-teacher ratios, increasing healthcare and eldercare staff, and so much more. And there are millions looking for useful work. The disconnect between people wanting to work, work that needs to be done and the number of jobs that happen to be available only occurs if the guiding principle for job availability is profit. But when the needs of society as a whole are prioritized over the needs of wealthy few at the top, then achieving permanent, full employment is a piece of cake.

Productivity at Our Service

Today, the putative standard is a forty-hour workweek, with a concomitant eight-hour day. But for more than half of U.S. history, the workweek was longer. Not until 1898 did mineworkers win the eight-hour day. Two years later, the movement for a shorter workweek spread to the San Francisco Building Trades. By 1905, the eight-hour day was established coast-to-coast in the printing trades. The Ford Motor Company adopted the new shorter workweek in 1914. Railroad workers won the right in 1916. Only in 1937, with the adoption of the Fair Labor Standards Act, did the eight-hour day become the national standard. (While many today are compelled to work longer in order to make ends meet, the legal norm remains 40 hours.)

But since 1937, the productivity of American labor has increased more than six-fold! In other words, the value produced by a full day’s labor in 1937 would require less than two hours today.

So an obvious solution to unemployment presents itself: reduce the workweek with no reduction in pay.

If the workweek were reduced from 40 to 30 hours, it would create 53 million new jobs. This is more than three times the current number of unemployed. To fill all the remaining slots and maintain current production levels, we would have to plead with the governments of Mexico, Central America and elsewhere to send more immigrants our way!

Can we afford this? Absolutely. Up to now – and especially since 1973 – increases in productivity have been siphoned off as corporate profits and enriched only those at the top.

Implementing 30 hours work for 40 hours pay (“30-for-40”) would simply redirect newly produced wealth away from corporate profits and back into the pockets of those who produce it. Instead of all the benefits of automation and increased productivity going to the top 1%, 30-for-40 would allocate a greater share of those gains to working people.

Big Business Despises Full Employment

Not only would using 30-for-40 to eliminate unemployment directly cut into corporate profits, there are other side effects that corporate behemoths hate but working people would love.

To begin with, full employment would strengthen the working class vis-à-vis the 1%. With abundant, well-paying jobs for all, there would be no one a recalcitrant company could hire as strikebreakers if the workers organized to withhold their labor. It would be more difficult to harass and victimize union organizers because, with full employment, all workers would be harder to replace.

What’s more, less time at work leaves more time for other things. This would include time for rest, recreation, attention to family and exploring creative endeavors. But it would also allow extra time for education, organizing, getting involved and fighting back. In a world imbalanced by massive economic, social and political inequality, allowing the majority more time for education and organization is the last thing those at the top want to see.

Jobs For All vs. Universal Basic Income

Of course, basic human solidarity demands that anyone who is old, sick, disabled or otherwise unable to work should be provided for at society’s expense, with their medical care fully covered and living expenses provided at union wage scales. This can easily be paid for by reallocating funds from the oppressive military budget and by taxing corporate profits. This policy should be combined with a guarantee of a job for all who are able to work.

Lately, some have promoted the notion of a Universal Basic Income (UBI). To the extent that a UBI were funded by redistributing wealth from those at the top to those below – a principle that is by no means guaranteed by the concept – a UBI could be a positive reform. But a UBI is no substitute for a guarantee of jobs for all. Why not?

First and foremost, labor is power. The only power that can counter the concentrated riches of the ruling oligarchs is the collective organization of millions of every-day working people, who, as it happens, produce all of society’s wealth. The root of working class power is the fact that the labor of millions of people generates the riches enjoyed by those at the top, as well as the considerably smaller share currently allocated to the majority. By withholding their labor en mass, working people have ultimate veto power over any government policy. Guaranteeing jobs for all strengthens the ties of working people to production, maximizing the number participating in the labor force and, thus, the number who have a hand on the lever of society’s productive apparatus. A UBI by itself, by contrast, does nothing to reinforce people’s connection to work – that is, to the fundamental engine of wealth creation.

In addition, the rate of any UBI will necessarily be too low. There is a built-in imperative for a UBI to be small enough to encourage people to work. In order to induce people to work at all, the UBI has to be inadequate (or “barely adequate”) to live on by itself. But in the absence of guaranteed jobs for all, “encouraging people to work” means compelling them to compete for an insufficient number of low paying positions. When the supply of labor exceeds its demand in available jobs, wages are driven down, all other things being equal. And if the UBI is to be low enough to encourage people to work, it must ultimately follow wages downward. So, contrary to the assertion of UBI boosters that it would exert upward pressure on wages, a UBI without a job guarantee is just as likely to lead to a race to the bottom.

A UBI is also susceptible to other kinds of manipulation. If a UBI is used to justify cuts to Medicaid, food stamps, unemployment compensation and other social programs, it’s all too easy for the programs replaced to be inadequately covered by the UBI, or for some sectors of the population to benefit at the expense of others.

A UBI can be used to pit employed workers against those without jobs. And, a UBI would do little to address conditions on the job or provide more than a palliative remedy for the unjust distribution of gains from increased automation and productivity.

A job guarantee is different. It would establish a principle that strengthens the hand of working people as a whole. And the concept of “jobs for all” is automatically adjustable: As productivity or the relative size of the work force increases, the workweek can be reduced from 30, to 25 or fewer hours to spread the remaining work around. That’s what a rational society, freed from profit-driven tyranny would do.

The next time some pundit or politician tells you we can’t guarantee jobs for all, recognize that they’re playing you for a chump. They’re drawing an artificial box and counting on you not thinking outside it. Remind them that their assertion is only true if profits are prioritized over human needs. Explain that 30-for-40 solves the problem handily, at great benefit to the vast majority. And who knows? With guaranteed jobs for all, even narrow-minded pundits and politicians might be able to find socially useful work.

India’s Failed Food System

Moin Qazi

India grows enough food to meet the needs of its entire population, yet is unable to feed millions of them, especially women and children. India ranks 100 in the Global Hunger Index (GHI) — 2017 of 119 countries, where it has consistently ranked poor. Even as millions of Indians go to sleep on an empty stomach, the country wastes food worth a whopping Rs 58,000 crores in a year — about seven per cent of its total food production. It is lost during production, processing, retailing and consumption.

One of the major ways of addressing food insecurity is controlling wastage. It’s the most obvious place to start. India is the second largest producer of vegetables and fruit but 25 per cent to 30 per cent of it is wasted due to inadequate logistical support, lack of refrigerated storage, supply chain bottlenecks, poor transport and underdeveloped marketing channels. The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) puts this figure at around 40 per cent — worth around $8.3 billion.

Twenty-one million metric tonnes of wheat — almost equal to Australia’s production — rots each year due to improper storage. According to the Associated Chambers of Commerce, the country experiences a post-harvest loss of Rs 2 lakh crores annually due to lack of food processing units and storage facilities. Without improvements to its “cold chain” infrastructure, from farm harvest to table, India’s food problems will remain highly critical.

The World Bank recently warned that 60 per cent of the country’s food subsidies do not reach the poor; they are sponged by middlemen. It is high time the government made some fundamental changes. Reforming the faltering public distribution system or plugging the leaks that siphon precious aid destined for the hungry and malnourished is overdue.

The Food Corporation of India (FCI) was set up in 1964 to offer impetus to price support systems, encourage nationwide distribution and maintain sufficient buffer of staples like wheat and rice but has been woefully inadequate to the needs of the country. Around one per cent of GDP gets shaved off annually in the form of food waste. The FCI has neither the warehouse capacity nor the manpower to manage this humongous stockpile of foodgrains. Every year, the government purchases millions of tonnes of grain from farmers for ensuring they get a good price and for use in food subsidy programmes and to maintain an emergency buffer. The cruel truth is that most of it has to be left out in the open, vulnerable to rain and attacks by rodents, or stored in makeshift spaces, covered by tarpaulin sheets, creating high rates of spoilage. Several countries are now using metal grain silos to guard against fungus ruining grain stock.

According to the agriculture ministry, Rs 50,000 crores worth of food produced is wasted every year in the country. One million tonnes of onions vanish on their way from farms to markets, as do 2.2 million tonnes of tomatoes. Tomatoes get squished if they are packed into jute sacks. Overall, five million eggs crack or go bad due to lack of cold storage. Just three states — Punjab, Madhya Pradesh and Haryana — grow most of India’s grain, and the food has to be transported to far-flung areas.

A study undertaken by the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (2013) highlights that the underlying cause of post-harvest loss in the country is the lack of infrastructure for short-term storage, particularly at the farm level, as well as the lack of intermediate processing in the production catchments. If there are no proper roads linking fields to markets, farmers cannot easily sell their surplus produce, which may then spoil before it can be eaten. Improving road and rail capacity enables farmers to reach buyers — and fertilisers and other agricultural inputs to reach farmers.

The study estimated that around 67 million tones — of the value of around Rs 92,000 crores — are wasted in India every year. That’s more than the national average of Britain, the entire food requirement of all of Bihar for a year. In terms of monetary value it is nearly two-thirds of the amount that the government needs to feed 600 million poor Indians with subsidised ration under the National Food Security programme.

A recent study conducted by the Indian Institute of Management, Kolkata has uncovered that only 10 per cent of perishable produce get cold storage facility in India. These are mostly used for potatoes to meet India’s robust demand for chips. This, along with inappropriate supply chain management, has resulted in India becoming a significant contributor to food wastage both at pre and post-harvest waste in cereals, pulses, fruits and vegetables. The study estimates that India needs storage facilities for another 370 million metric tonnes of perishable produce.

Apart from the wastage of the food produced, the resources lost in the form of inputs during food production are also considerable. According to the United Nations, India is estimated to use more than 230 cubic kilometre of fresh water annually — enough to provide drinking water to 100 million people a year — for producing food items that are ultimately wasted. Besides this, nearly 300 million barrels of oil used in the process is also ultimately wasted.

Meeting the food needs of a growing population in India (1.7 billion by 2050) while reducing food loss and waste poses a serious challenge. Wasting a kilogramme of wheat and rice would mean wasting 1,500 and 3,500 litre of water respectively that is consumed in their production.

The World Economic Forum cautions that food shortages are likely to cause one of the biggest risks to global stability over the next decade following extreme risks posed by climate change.

In recent years, numerous initiatives and interventions have been undertaken by the Indian government, local and international actors to target food losses and waste across the agricultural value chain. For instance, the Indian government is seeking to streamline and modernise agricultural value chains, through reformation of the PDS to reduce waste and loss associated with the distribution and storage of foodgrains. The government is also extending support for the setting up of cold chain projects whereby 138 cold chain projects have been installed.

Studies have also indicated that on-farm interventions can contribute to reducing food losses and waste. For instance, a pilot study sponsored by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has revealed food loss reductions of around 60 per cent during field trials testing low-cost storage techniques and handling practices. Another study undertaken in Punjab that focuses on the harvesting of kinnow (a citrus fruit) demonstrates how on-farm food losses decreased from 10 per cent to only 2 per cent when a combination of harvesting techniques were used.

India has developed some modern supply chains linked to food processing companies, such as Nestlé, Pepsi Unilever and Del Monte. But these handle only a fraction of the country’s perishable food.

India needs to mobilise large-scale investment into cold storage, refrigerated transport and other modern logistics to modernise its food supply chain. That is the prime need if we want to really address the problem in right earnest. More than investment we need a strong will of the political class and imaginative thinking on part of the policy planers. We have the resources but need to summon our determination. Fixing this problem will solve many of our related issues, particularly poverty, hunger and malnutrition, and open the gates to a new and prosperous India.

Amazon begins operations in Australia

Patrick Kelly

Online retail giant Amazon commenced operations early December in Australia, opening a fulfilment centre in outer Melbourne.

The move forms part of Amazon’s continuing global expansion, based on the accumulation of profit through the brutal exploitation of low-wage warehouse workers. The company’s CEO, Jeff Bezos, is now the world’s wealthiest individual, with a personal fortune estimated at more than $US100 billion.

Amazon’s entry into the Australian retail market is expected to undermine the existing corporations that currently enjoy monopolistic control.

The Amazon warehouse in Melbourne

Morgan Stanley earlier this year predicted that the value of rival retailers, including JB Hi-Fi, Harvey Norman and Wesfarmers (owner of the Coles, Bunnings, Kmart and Target chains), would plunge by more than $1.2 billion. A UBS survey of fund managers and brokers in April reported expectations that Amazon would cut sales of rival retailers by 5.2 percent in the next 3-5 years, with earnings slashed by 16 percent. Specific retailers, especially in the electronics sector, will be even worse hit, with JB Hi-Fi earnings expected to decline by 33 percent.

The profit squeeze will trigger a sector-wide restructuring, including store closures, job losses and even greater pressure for lower wages and worse conditions for retail and warehouse workers. Fairfax Media this month reported secretive plans by grocery giant Woolworths to “fight Amazon” by creating four “dark stores,” solely devoted to packing and shipping online home deliveries, using 400 workers paid up to $3,000 less a year than regular Woolworths supermarket workers.

Amazon is notorious internationally for its appalling treatment of warehouse workers. In the US and Europe, the company has presided over multiple workplace injuries and deaths. Its warehouses feature physically harmful demands, relentless speed-up, total surveillance of its workforce, dangerously hot conditions and minimal toilet and meal breaks.

The situation will be no different for workers in Amazon’s 24,000 square-metre facility in Dandenong South, a largely immigrant, working class outer suburb of Melbourne. Operations remain on a small scale, but the company has declared its intention to quickly expand and employ several thousand workers. Already, advertised jobs include “physical warehouse activities” that would require “lifting and moving material up to 16kg each” and “standing and walking for up to 10–12 hours a day.”

Workers entering the warehouse car park have been greeted with a large billboard declaring: “Welcome Amazonians. It’s still day one! Are you ready to make a difference?”

The state Labor Party government in Victoria hailed Amazon’s decision to set up operations in Melbourne rather than Sydney, which the company previously considered as a base. Industry Minister Wade Noonan declared Amazon “the latest global company to choose Victoria for its Australian operations.” He claimed it would be “opening up retail opportunities for thousands of local businesses.”

Amazon is adept at minimising its tax and avoiding regulations by playing rival governments off against one another. In the US, more than 200 cities are engaged in a bidding war to lure the company’s second headquarters, with Chicago offering a $2.25 billion “incentive package” and Stonecrest, Georgia, offering to change its name to “Amazon” and appoint Bezos “mayor for life.” According to media reports, the Victorian government did not lure Amazon with subsidies. Its standard pro-business planning regulations and tax system proved enough to attract the corporate giant.

Several business figures have responded to Amazon’s entry into the Australian market by promoting nationalism, advancing the false notion that working people in Australia have a stake in the accumulation of profit by “their” corporations. Former electronics retailer Dick Smith declared: “It is extreme capitalism. Amazon will make a fortune, and take hundreds of millions of dollars out of this country and send it back to the United States… As it gets greedier and greedier there is no doubt in my mind they will do well. All of the money will not stay here, like from Harvey Norman, or JB Hi-Fi, the money will go back to the United States.”

The trade unions hope to establish a relationship with Amazon as soon as possible. In existing retail warehouses, the union bureaucrats serve as an industrial police force, overseeing the exploitation of low-wage workers. The National Union of Workers (NUW), which covers most warehouse staff, is responsible for numerous industrial betrayals and is currently overseeing the planned “orderly closure” of Woolworths’ Broadmeadows facility in northern Melbourne, at the cost of more than 700 jobs.

NUW national secretary Tim Kennedy told the Guardian he wrote to Amazon in August “seeking a meeting to discuss plans for Australia but never heard back.” He later told the Age: “We want to organise them; we will really focus on this as a big opportunity.”

The union’s plans to capitalise on the “opportunity” provided by Amazon’s operations have been backed by the pseudo-left group, Socialist Alternative. This organisation works very closely with the NUW in several Melbourne warehouses, serving as its “left” apologist for every sell-out and manoeuvre. Before Amazon’s entry to Australia, Socialist Alternative declared that the company “presents a challenge for the Australian trade union movement” and published a fawning interview with a NUW official.

Typhoon ravages southern Philippines

John Roberts

Tropical storm Tembin made landfall in the southern Philippines island of Mindanao as a strengthened typhoon late last Friday, resulting in torrential rain, mudslides and the deaths of well over 300 people.

Tembin brought sustained winds of 120 kilometres per hour, with gusts of 145 kilometres per hour. The main damage came from the heavy rain.

Known in the Philippines as Vinta, the typhoon struck hardest on the island’s Zamboanga Peninsula and parts of northern Mindanao, with the provinces of Lanao del Norte and Lanao del Sur bearing the brunt.

About 20 typhoons a year hit the Philippines. Less than a week earlier, tropical storm Urduja (international name Kai-Tak) swept through the central Philippines, leaving 47 dead and 44 missing. Often the storms miss Mindanao, but not this time.

Among the towns affected by Tembin was Marawi in Lanao del Sur. There the typhoon undermined attempts to rebuild the town after a five-month assault by the Philippines armed forces, supposedly to destroy an Islamist group. The campaign, from May until October, supported by Washington, left 1,000 dead and displaced 200,000 people.

Initially the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (NDRRMC) assessed Tembin’s impact as 164 dead, 176 missing and 118,596 families displaced. Some 97,000 people were housed in 261 evacuations shelters, with another 85,000 sheltering elsewhere.

The death toll steadily increased as more remote areas were reached. Some news reports yesterday put the figure at 340. Many of the missing are believed to be dead. The final number might not be known for some time. The Zamboanga Peninsula has been without power and communications, and whole towns are cut off by bridge collapses, mudslides and flooding.

According to NDRRMC spokesperson Mina Marasigan, the heavy rain caused landslides in the mountainous terrain that formed natural dams. As the deluge continued, these dams burst, sending torrents of water onto the villages below.

The force of the water was certainly a factor. Health worker Arturo Simbajon told Reuters that the coastal village of Anungan was almost entirely wiped out when logs, boulders and mud swept down a river and pushed everything out to sea. “Only the mosque was left standing. People were watching the rising sea levels but did not expect the water to come from behind.”

Sibuco mayor Bong Edding blamed the loss of houses and the washing away of 30 residents on logging operations in mountains above the town. Five bodies had been recovered when he spoke to the media.

However, a significant factor in the deaths and injuries was the failure of the authorities to evacuate people from the most vulnerable areas.

NDRRMC spokesperson Marasigan claimed that the national government exhausted every means to alert people in the threatened areas in plenty of time. She said the organisation would now investigate the failure to implement pre-emptive evacuations.

Marasigan implied the victims were to blame. She told a Manila news conference it was difficult to move people from their homes before Christmas. “We don’t want to be dragging people out of their homes before Christmas, but it’s best to convince them to quietly understand the importance of why they are being evacuated.”

These comments beg the question as to what government assistance was provided to those in the most endangered areas and whether adequate shelters were available.

In Vietnam, authorities evacuated 74,000 people from the most vulnerable areas, before the typhoon was downgraded to a tropical depression. Authorities in 15 provinces and cities were prepared to move one million people had the storm hit the tip of the Mekong Delta as initially predicted.

Marasigan announced a pittance in compensation. Each family that lost a loved one would receive 10,000 pesos ($US200) from the government while those with injured members would get 5,000 pesos. Those with totally damaged houses would be entitled to get 30,000 pesos, while those with partially damaged homes would receive 10,000 pesos for emergency shelter assistance.

The indifference of the Philippines authorities can be seen by the government’s decision in January 2017 to shut down the National Operational Assessment of Hazard (NOAH) project due to lack of funds. Set up in 2012, the NOAH project was to be the country’s main service for mapping and measuring threats to vulnerable areas.

NOAH brought together scientists in every field related to natural disasters. The program included establishing a six-hour warning to agencies involved in disaster prevention and mitigation.

From 2012 to 2017, the project was managed by the Department of Science and Technology but this year was downgraded and passed to the University of the Philippines. University officials offered to assist authorities before the present crisis but NDRRMC spokeswoman Marasigan said she was unaware of the offer.

Mahar Lagmay, head of University of the Philippines NOAH Centre, told the Philippine Star that many lives could have been saved had the government used existing weather forecasting technology and data that can project scenarios in particular areas hours in advance.

“When we were part of the NDRRMC, this is what we used to do,” Lagmay said. “We interpret data from sensors and satellites and provide hazard-specific, area-focus and time-bound information that can be passed on to local government units.”

The impact of so-called natural disasters is made worse by the failure of governments to make proper preparations, provide adequate warnings and assistance to those affected.

Millions of impoverished workers and peasants are forced to live in poorly-built housing that make them particularly exposed to flooding and typhoons. These structures are often built in low-lying areas or at the base of mountain ranges where land is cheap.

The impact of 2013 super-typhoon Haiyan, with sustained winds of 315 kilometres an hour and gusts of 380 kilometres per hour, made plain what was necessary. Solidly-built and well-provisioned evacuation centres connected to advanced warning systems, and assistance to move to the shelters, would have substantially reduced the death toll of more than 6,000 people.

UK: Thousands to see in the New Year sleeping rough on the streets

Margot Miller

Thousands of UK families are suffering acute social distress, their lives blighted by low income, debt or homelessness.

Last week, a committee of MPs in the cross-party Public Accounts Committee were forced to acknowledge that homelessness was a “national crisis.” They cited a report from the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman that more than 9,000 people are rough sleepers and 78,000 families are living in temporary accommodation in England alone, including 120,000 children. Many of these are working families who have been made homeless due to the rocketing cost of private rent.

Fourteen million people live in poverty in the UK today—one in five of the population—including 8 million working age adults, 4 million children and 1.9 million pensioners.

And the numbers are rising.

Tents of homeless people in Manchester St Anne's Square in 2015 before they were served an eviction notice by the city council

Among the poorest—those at or below 60 percent of the median income—are some one-and-a-quarter million people classed as destitute, including 312,000 children.

The destitute, as defined by the Joseph Rowntree Trust, are “people [who] have: slept rough, had one or no meals a day for two or more days, been unable to heat or to light their home for five or more days, gone without weather-appropriate clothes or gone without basic toiletries.”

The figures are startling in one of the richest countries in the world. Hunger has now become endemic, with severe levels of poverty forcing many to turn to food banks or other charities just to survive.

Research by the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organisation indicates that one in five children in the UK live with an adult who is moderately or severely food-insecure and one in ten live with a severely food-insecure adult. Parents or carers skip meals to feed their children.

Earlier this year, a cross-party panel of MPs warned that up to 3 million children risk going hungry during the school holidays, when children from poorer families can no longer access free school meals.

A recent article in the Manchester Evening News alerted readers to a food bank in the town of Heywood, outside Manchester, which had run out of food.

Father Paul Daley, who runs the food bank from nearby St. Joseph’s church, told a World Socialist Web Site reporter that this crisis was caused “not because people are giving less,” but because “demand is increasing.”

“There has been a phenomenal response [donations from the public] since the article,” he said.

A homeless man in the Piccadilly area of Manchester city centre

Last year, the Wood Street Mission charity, based in Manchester city centre and established in 1869, helped 2,000 Greater Manchester families with donated food and toys over the Christmas period. Due to their work, 4,500 children were able to receive gifts on Christmas Day last year.

Just before Christmas, the manager of the Wood Street Mission, Des Lynch, who has worked for the charity for 20 years, spoke about its work to the WSWS.

He explained that the families the Wood Street Mission staff meet are referred to them by health visitors, mental health nurses or social workers. The help they give is varied—from donations of nursery equipment such as cots and prams, to the provision of school uniforms in the SmartStart project at the beginning of the school term.

“Last New Year we distributed £6,000 worth of brand new coats,” explained Lynch, “because poorer kids turn up at school cold and wet.”

To help children live normal lives, 10,000 chocolate eggs were distributed to them last Easter. “Every year we have a book club,” he said. “We hire a venue, take 3,000 books, and invite the kids in—they can take the books they want.”

Lynch emphasised, “There are 50,000 in poverty in Salford and Manchester today. ... If we’re dealing with 7,000 over Christmas last year, the point is we’re not even scraping the surface.”

Since the international banking collapse in 2008 and the bailout by the Labour government, it is the working class, not the rich, who are paying the price—through endless austerity cuts, the creation of precarious work and a low-wage economy, and changes to the benefits system. Successive Labour and Conservative governments have eviscerated the welfare state.

“We have seen an increase in families coming to us who are in work of some kind,” said Lynch. “Zero hours contracts are not helping. You can be the best budgeter in the world, but if you’re only working 12 or 14 hours a week, how can you possibly budget?”

A homeless young woman in the Piccadilly area of Manchester city centre

When asked if he thought the election of a Jeremy Corbyn-led Labour government would do anything to alleviate poverty, he replied with an emphatic “No!”

“We’ve had multiple changes of government since the Mission was founded in 1869, and no government of any colour has ever tackled child poverty, whether Labour, Lib[eral] Dems [Democrats] or the Tories. If we change the government tomorrow, would it make a difference?”

Increasing inequality is visible in all the major cities of the UK. “Manchester is extremely affluent. … But walk 20 minutes out of the city centre, the people on the outskirts don’t venture in, they don’t feel they belong, it’s too expensive for them. ... Take Ancoats [a gentrified former working class city centre district], it’s totally socially cleansed.”

From Manchester’s main Piccadilly railway station, every few feet there are homeless people snatching some rest in shop doorways, with their only protection against the elements a few blankets and perhaps a sleeping bag.

In 2015, the Labour-run Manchester City Council obtained a court injunction to remove makeshift tent cities that had sprung up to provide rough sleepers with some shelter from the cold.

This month, the Salford Star reported there has been an “explosion” in homeless squats in the past three years in Greater Manchester, coinciding with the rollout of Universal Credit—the new benefit system aimed at cutting welfare spending and further impoverishing the working class. A Freedom of Information request from Greater Manchester police files revealed 850 squat incidents and 39 evictions.

The number of privately owned empty properties far exceeds the number of homeless adults and families. The skyline of Manchester, as in other major cities, is being transformed by cranes and new residential tower blocks. These are not being built for working people, but as luxury apartments to be sold as buy-to-lets at exorbitant rents. No cheaper council homes are being built, when at least 80,000 are needed nationally.

People sleeping rough since 2011 has increased by 134 percent, while the number of families in temporary accommodation has risen by 60 percent since 2010. The Public Accounts Committee report condemns the attitude of the Department for Communities and Local Government as “unacceptably complacent.” The government has cynically committed to eliminating rough sleeping by 2027—10 more winters!

Profiteering by insulation industry central to Grenfell Tower fire in London

Tom Pearce

An investigation by Sky News highlights the role of profiteering by corporations in the Grenfell fire.

Conducted over four months, the report reveals a culture of intimidation, bullying and lies within the plastics industry. Not only were the rules manipulated to have more plastic fitted to buildings, but people were also silenced who would speak out against criminal practices.

Senior figures in the fire safety sector had warned well in advance that a disaster of the type seen at Grenfell was likely to happen. Moreover, many advisers had been telling successive Labour and Conservative governments about the dangers and that the building regulations were not fit for purpose.

Sky News found that no one would go on camera because they were told that “speaking out about [the plastic insulation industry] was impossible” and that people involved had had “threats to sue.”

Rockwool, which produces “non-combustible mineral-based alternative to plastic insulation,” was sued for “malicious falsehood” because they made the claim that their product did not burn and that plastic does.

In 2013, an insurance firm investigated the safety of plastic insulation. It found that the panels burned more fiercely in real life than in official tests. As the result of posting the footage on YouTube, they were threatened with legal action and had to conceal the brand of insulation.

Just a week after the Grenfell fire, the insulation industry was making sure it was business as usual. Sky revealed that “six European plastic industry lobby groups” had complained in a letter about a paper that highlighted the dangers of toxic smoke from burning plastic. It said, “We request that the article is withdrawn. … The consequences […] are enormous and could well lead to significant consequential losses.”

The main lobby group for the plastics industry changed its name in the wake of Grenfell. They went from being the “British Rigid Urethane Foam Manufacturers’ Association [BRUFMA]” to the Insulation Manufacturers Association [IMA]. The group cited “events of the year” as the reason for the change.

Sky found evidence that the BRUFMA/IMA had driven government policy on building regulations. It reported that the body has “high level involvement in the drafting and regular revision of British and European standards [and] the Building Regulations.” It “even boasts that as a member you have the “opportunity to influence Government bodies and NGOs” and “direct input into relevant British Standards committees.”

How this took place was seen in 2011 when the Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC) invited industry members to create a committee around the “Green Deal.” This was an initiative to push more insulation into homes to meet climate change targets. Of the 10 firms and construction industry groups on that committee, “four were members of BRUFMA. One of them was Celotex, the firm whose plastic insulation would be fitted to the outside of Grenfell Tower four years later.”

Celotex was embedded in government policy, with its technical director, Rob Warren, a leading committee member. He boasted that he was “working inside government” to “shape this critical policy enabling the insulation industry to maximize the benefits.”

By 2015, Warren was even more brazen with the trade magazine Urethanes Technology International, reporting he had said “regulatory change was the ‘greatest driver’ of plastic insulation sales.”

Without new regulations, Warren was reported as saying, “You cannot give insulation away and the public are not really interested.” As a result of the new legislation that the insulation corporations were instrumental in formulating, the market value of the plastic insulation products doubled between 2012 and 2016.

This coincided with fire safety being virtually ignored. Sky News spoke to Simon Hay who also sat on the DECC committee and who recalled that fire [was not] “mentioned in any of the meetings.”

Instead the “government’s 2012 Green Deal launch report ‘Opportunities for Industry,’ contains 126 mentions of ‘cost’ and 119 of ‘saving,’ but nothing about fire safety.”

Fire safety expert Niall Rowan from the Passive Fire Protection Association told Sky: “Due to the green agenda we’ve had a push to insulate buildings and the easiest and cheapest way to insulate was using these combustible materials […] our eye was off the ball.”

One government department was peddling combustible plastic products, even as another was being warned of the massive risks in the use of plastic insulation in residential homes.

In 1999, a group of flats caught fire in Ayrshire, Scotland, killing one and injuring others. A government inquiry found that the building regulations were “totally inadequate.” In 2009, the Lakanal House fire in London saw six people killed due to the use of combustible plastic insulation, but resulted in no change to regulations.

After being refused access by the DCLG to “54 submissions they received in a 2010 consultation into how the fire safety rules needed to change,” Sky Newsused the Freedom of Information Act to try to “read them [but] our application was refused on the grounds that releasing them was ‘not in the public interest.’”

They managed to gain access to one from the Fire Protection Association (FPA). “Urgent research is required,” it warned the government, into whether building regulations were “fit for purpose.” The submission continued, “building regulations enforcement is not effective” with inspectors turning up “less frequently if at all.” Ministers “should act.”

The plastic industry utilised deregulation to amass large profits. In 1984, under the Thatcher Conservative government, the Construction Industry Council (CIC) was formed to allow the privatisation of Building Control. There are now over 150 companies that provide the service, speeding up the completion of building works to save money for the firms involved.

Under the Blair Labour government, the Regulatory Reform Order 2005 scrapped fire certificates for buildings—leaving landlords responsible for ensuring fire risk assessments are carried out.

Technical expert Ian Abley said that the 2005 legislation “was a significant weakening of fire safety protection. … A system of self-certification by building owners is weaker than a system of certification by a fire officer, somebody whose interest is directly to make sure his men and women fire officers don’t die in fighting fires.”

Abley continued, “There are holes in the regulatory reform order that don’t necessarily include the outside of a block of flats—which is Grenfell.”

Despite myriad warnings, there have been no changes in fire safety in the last 12 years. The government has continued to seek advice from the industry that has profited from the reckless use of flammable material on buildings.

The fire tests to prove the validity of plastic cladding are monopolised by one company: the Building Research Establishment (BRE). Sky News revealed that “in 2005, to manage the risk from plastic insulation and cladding [BRE] creat[ed] a fire test called BS 8414.” With millions of pounds spent on these tests and with vast profits at stake, “BRE told the Government that the building regulations could cope.”

In April 2016—just 14 months before Grenfell—playing down the risks of adding combustible cladding to high-rise buildings, the BRE said that “with the exception of one or two unfortunate cases, there is currently no evidence from BRE Global’s fire investigations for DCLG to suggest that current building regulation recommendations, to limit vertical fire spread up the exterior of high rise buildings, are failing in their purpose.”

Simon Hay, an architect who sat on the DECC committee in 2011, said, “I’m afraid there will be buildings that are unsafe, and that must be a worry for people who are falling asleep in them.”

Was the 2016 terrorist attack on the Berlin Christmas market an “intelligence operation with deadly collateral damage?”

Dietmar Henning

One year ago, Łukasz Urban, Sebastian Berlin, Klaus Jacob, Dorit Krebs, Angelika Klosters, Dalia Elyakim, Fabrizia Di Lorenzo, Christoph Herrlich, Nada Čižmár, Peter Völker, Anna Bagratuni and Georgiy Bagratuni died as victims of the terrorist attack on the Christmas market at Breitscheidplatz in Berlin.

Their killer was Anis Amri. “This disastrous crime will be solved—in every detail—and it will be punished,” said Chancellor Angela Merkel immediately after the attack.

In fact, the police and intelligence agencies that had been shadowing the Tunisian since he had entered Germany in the summer of 2015 are likely to have a vested interest in keeping such details in the dark. New documents obtained by Welt am Sonntag and also the Berliner Zeitung corroborate the suspicion that the authorities abandoned their surveillance of Amri a few months before the deadly attack because they knew he was planning just such an action.

Although the government claims to date that the foreign intelligence service (BND) and the domestic secret service (BfV) played no operative role in the Amri case, Die Welt has obtained a two-page secret service analysis from January 2016 regarding Amri. It is signed personally by BfV boss Hans-Georg Maaßen.

The Berliner Zeitung writes that Amri possibly “had already come to Germany as a suicide bomber of the terrorist militia Islamic State (IS)”. On 26 January 2016, the secret service established that he had been accompanied on his entry by Habib S. and Bilal Ben Ammar; the latter is “believed to belong to IS.”

In October 2015, in the context of an “Islamism test case”, the North Rhine-Westphalia State Criminal Police Office (LKA) had already written that the “obvious ideological connection to the so-called ‘Islamic State’” was “significantly increasing the danger” of terrorist attacks.

Since Amri’s smartphone was monitored 24/7, the authorities knew that on 14 December 2015 he had already downloaded detailed instructions on blending explosives, and building bombs and hand grenades.

The would-be assassin was constantly involved in Islamist circles. With the help of a “probationary source”, the secret service could observe that he repeatedly visited the now closed Fussilet Mosque in Berlin and met there with known jihadists.

One of his most important contacts in North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) was Boban Simeonovic whose alias in Dortmund was Abdul Rahman. This person was again one of the closest confidantes of the Islamist Ahmad A., called Abu Walaa, who is currently on trial in Celle. The police informant “Murat” operated in his circle for the NRW LKA. The undercover informant “VP 01” had close contact with Amri, at least since November 2015. At least once, he personally drove Amri to Berlin.

In the Celle trial, the testimony of a witness who warned about Murat has emerged. “He said again and again that one should commit attacks in Germany, that one needs good men who are capable of doing so”, the Süddeutsche Zeitung quoted from the testimony. So Amri could have been encouraged in his terror plans by Murat, an undercover informant.

The Die Welt article and its authors Stefan Aust and Helmar Büchel put forward the hypothesis—held by Green politician Hans-Christian Ströbele to be the most plausible—of the “involvement of international secret services”, namely the American. “These may have seen Amri as bait that could lead them to those pulling the strings, the IS planners in Libya.”

By February 2, 2016 at the latest, Amri phoned two middle-ranking IS cadres in Libya and offered himself as a suicide bomber for an attack in Germany.

When Amri arrived in Berlin by bus on 18 February 2016, he was briefly arrested by local LKA officials, although the NRW LKA had specifically requested only observation be conducted and not an arrest, to keep the surveillance secret and to enable the gathering of further evidence against Amri and his contacts. This supposed “glitch” was already dubious, and now it turns out that it was mainly about Amri’s mobile phone, which was seized when he was arrested.

The more than 12,000 pieces of data, including communication with Amri’s IS contacts in Libya, were forwarded by the BKA to the BfV. Whether the BND, and through it, foreign secret services, also received this data is unclear. The government refuses to provide answers, citing a threat to state security.

Then, with the help of the informant “Murat”, Amri’s new phone was “cloned” so that from then on his encrypted chat communication with IS cadres using the messenger services Telegram and WhatsApp could be followed in real time.

Although it is clear from intercepted calls and chat records that Amri was planning a suicide attack, he remained at large.

The Die Welt reporters support Ströbele’s thesis of a protective American hand. They point out that “in a German-controlled secret operation on 19 January 2017, US Air Force B2 stealth bombers attacked the very IS desert camp in Libya, where they suspected those behind Amri were located.” They raise the question of whether the attack on the Berlin Christmas market, rather than the result of “official sloppiness”, was an “intelligence operation with deadly collateral damage.”

Neither the Green, Ströbele, nor Die Welt reporters ask the obvious question: might the German police and intelligence services also have welcomed an attack for domestic political reasons?

Like the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 in the United States, Paris 2015 and Brussels 2016, the attack on Berlin’s Breitscheidplatz was systematically used to strengthen the state apparatus and tighten anti-refugee laws. And in all four cases, there were perpetrators at work who had long been known to and monitored by the security authorities.

The new documents prove that both the US and the German secret services and police authorities had an interest in Amri being able to move freely.

When he was afraid of being exposed and arrested because of a stabbing in the drug milieu of Berlin Neukölln, he tried to leave Germany via Switzerland in the direction of Italy and to settle in Tunisia or Libya.

“The investigators are alarmed when they realize that Amri wanted to leave Germany,” writes the Berliner Zeitung. Apparently, that would have been bad for the surveillance of Amri. Immediately, the LKA in Berlin organised the live surveillance of Amri’s smartphone, while he travelled by long-distance bus to Zurich. Each of his conversations was immediately translated by interpreters and submitted to the investigators.

On July 30, 2016, Amri was arrested in Friedrichshafen, near the Swiss border, with drugs and fake papers. He was recorded as being an Islamist threat in the police computers, however, to the amazement of the duty judge, the public prosecutor’s office refused a detention request. “In order to hold Amri at least over the weekend, the judge in charge seized on an emergency solution, a temporary detention order, to secure deportation,” writes Die Welt. That could be imposed without a prosecutor.

Amri was irritated. According to the interrogation record, he said, “The deportation is 100 percent safe if I go now.” He wanted to leave Germany. But he was not allowed to. Instead, he was taken to the prison in Ravensbrück and was released from there just two days later. Whether Amri received a visit during these two days, and if so, by whom, is currently unknown. In any case, Amri did not flee abroad, but returned to Berlin.

Since his arrest in Friedrichshafen, Amri’s cloned mobile phone was confiscated, and the security authorities allegedly had no further knowledge from then on. In May 2016, the NRW LKA had already ended their surveillance of Amri, and on 21 September 2016 the Berlin LKA then did the same.

When, on November 2, 2016, the last time Amri was the subject of the “Common Counter-Terrorism Centre” (GTAZ), where representatives of more than 40 security agencies share knowledge and coordinate their actions, it was said that no “concrete danger” was discernible.

Even when Abu Walaa and his accomplices were arrested based on statements by the informant “Murat”, Amri remained at large. One month later, on December 19, 2016, he committed the fatal attack in Berlin.

Since the police did not initiate the search for the fugitive Amri until several hours later, he was able to run unmolested through the city with a pistol and flee across Western Europe. Shortly before Christmas he returned to Italy, from which he had started his trip to Germany in the summer of 2015—under the eyes of the Italian secret service, as Die Welt writes. He was finally shot dead by two policemen on the night of December 23, 2016 in Milan, by chance, as it is officially claimed.

VW colluded in torture of militant workers during military dictatorship in Brazil

Ludwig Weller

The Volkswagen Group worked closely with the CIA-backed military dictatorship in Brazil, which held power in from 1964 to 1985, and collaborated in the persecution, torture and murder of militant autoworkers. That is the finding of an investigation of VW do Brasil, published by the Brazilian Federal Prosecutor’s Office in mid-November.

The 406-page document produced by lead investigator Guaracy Mingardi is a damning exposure of the German-based auto giant. Not only does it confirm research published by broadcaster NDR and newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitunglast July, it also reveals much more. Mingardi concludes that “VW had an active role. It was not forced. The company took part because it wanted it that way.”

VW do Brasil workers who were persecuted by the military junta have joined forces in the “Workers Forum for Truth, Justice and Reparation” (Fórum de Trabalhadores por Verdade, Justiça e Reparação). They filed a legal complaint on September 22, 2015, raising five allegations against Volkswagen do Brasil:

First, the company actively participated in the arrest of VW employees. Second, it harassed and dismissed oppositionist workers. Third, it aided and abetted the government in torture. Fourth, VW officials financially supported the Operação Bandeirante (OBAN) torture centre and the DOI-CODI (Departamento de Operações de Informações-Centro de Operações de Defesa Interna). Fifth, VW is guilty of conspiracy and participation in the military coup of 1964 and the two decades of military rule that followed.

The OBAN torture centre was established in 1969. A year later, it was renamed DOI-CODI and directly subordinated to the military. An estimated 2,000 people were imprisoned there, most without trial. At least 66 were murdered, 39 of them under torture.

The workers’ charges have now been fully vindicated by the investigation.

Mingardi’s research also confirms the statements of former VW employees Lúcio Bellentani and Heinrich Plagge that they were arrested by secret police at their workplace under the supervision of armed VW plant security and taken to the DOPS torture centre.

Knowing that the federal prosecutor in São Paulo has been investigating VW since 2015 and would submit his findings in autumn 2017, the VW board in October 2016 commissioned historian Christopher Kopper, the son of former Deutsche Bank boss Hilmar Kopper, to investigate the case and submit his findings by the end of 2017.

This VW report was published last Thursday in São Bernardo do Campo. Originally, VW had hoped to stage a PR event with VW Human Resources Director Karlheinz Blessing personally shaking hands with torture victim Lúcio Bellentani. This did not happen, however, because workers refused to participate in the farce.

“None of the workers will appear at this event,” Bellentani declared. “We will stand outside the factory gate expressing our dissatisfaction with the company’s behaviour. So far, VW refuses to contact us officially.” Workers Forum wrote in a letter, “Despite international reporting, VW has not commented on the allegations… During the various witness hearings, in which former employees reported repression by the VW plant security, the links to the repressive organs of the state and of torture and arrests, the VW lawyers remained silent... So far, there is no signal from VW that the company really wants to work with the investigators.”

The VW Group apparently still believes it can escape any accountability.

In the press release published last Thursday, the VW board tried again to dodge responsibility. “Against the background of the scientifically evaluated sources, Professor Kopper concludes that ‘cooperation between individual members of the Volkswagen do Brasil plant security and the Political Police (DOPS) of the former military regime has taken place. But no clear evidence has been found that the collaboration was based on institutional action by the company.’”

The company statement cites Kopper’s assertion that a labour relations and cultural transformation began in 1979 when Volkswagen do Brasil became a pioneer of “employee participation” by establishing a works council. By 1982, the historian claimed, the existence of the works council, democratically elected by workers in a secret ballot, meant that “union members were no longer disadvantaged,” Kopper asserted.

The company’s press release was reported by most German newspapers without mentioning, let alone quoting, the Brazilian investigator’s findings. But even the Kopper report admitted, “The management of VW do Brasil remained completely loyal to the military government and shared its economic and domestic policy goals.” In another place, it says that the chief of the plant security service, Adhemar Rudge, had acted “on his own initiative, but with the tacit knowledge of the board.”

The “tacit knowledge of the board” can only mean that VW corporate board members, at least of VW do Brasil, were well aware of and supported the factory security service when it handed over oppositionist workers for torture. In legal terms, this is called, at the very least, aiding and abetting the criminal acts of torture and murder.

The Mingardi report is even clearer. It quotes from a document of September 11, 1975, in which VW plant security chief Rudge describes in detail the procedure for the preparation and transfer of data to the intelligence agencies. “It clearly shows,” says Minardi, “that Volkswagen’s plant security organization coordinated things with [intelligence agency] SNI. And above all, that information about these processes was known on the part of the company director [Wolfgang Sauer].”

So, the question is not how much the VW board knew. The evidence on this is clear: all information about unionized and politically active workers first went across the table of company director Wolfgang Sauer. He decided what went to the secret police of the Brazilian military junta, and thus who was arrested and tortured.

Another revelation could have serious legal and financial consequences for the VW group. Mingardi proves that VW do Brasil had also financially supported the Brazilian military dictatorship. On page 63 of his review, he writes, “There is no doubt that there was real support from Volkswagen for the OBAN [torture centre] and maybe even for the [future torture centre] DOI-CODI.”

Kopper too had to accept this. While claiming, “There was no clear evidence to suggest that VW do Brasil materially supported the operation of an Army Torture Centre (DOI-CODI),” he admitted, “Indirect financial contributions through membership fees to the industrial association FIESP were just as possible as was the free provision of vehicles.”

Kopper explains elsewhere: “Since the FIESP industrial association actively supported OBAN, and VW was one of the largest members of the association, direct (through the provision of vehicles) or indirect material support of the OBAN (via membership fees to FIESP) by VW do Brasil appears probable.”

Since almost all documents have been destroyed, evidence of the involvement of companies such as VW and wealthy individuals has long been concealed. It is well known that OBAN was financed, especially in its early days, by large donations from business figures in São Paulo. The average donation is said to have been $100,000 a year. Just how much the Volkswagen Group contributed is still unknown.

VW is responsible for these crimes. Workers must demand that the company and German political officials who are responsible be held to account and that the former VW workers and all the surviving victims of the OBAN torture centre and their relatives be made as whole as possible.

Last week, business daily Handelsblatt reported there had been a willingness on the German side at VW to set up a Victim Support Fund for South America, comparable to the fund from which forced labourers under the Nazi regime were compensated.

But even this proposal, which would be largely for public relations purposes, has been resisted.

“[T]he idea from Germany met with little favour from South American Volkswagen colleagues,” continues Handelsblatt. “They warned against paying compensation in Brazil. ‘It will be boundless, Volkswagen will open the tap with that,’ the Brazilian management informed the head office in Wolfsburg. The financial consequences are incalculable.”

The article concluded, “The South Americans prevailed in the end; there will be no compensation fund for the time being.”